Friday, May 20, 2011

I bet you made it somewhere nice, with a real job. Maybe you live in a condominium like you always wanted to, with wall-to-wall carpeting, ice-maker in the fridge, big teevee.

Of course, this is an address to you, dear reader, just as it was addressed to me, as Cohen's audience for CHAIN. How is your life, materially? What is your job? What do you make, or what services do you provide? Where did your job come from? How did you get it? What do you spend your earnings on? Do you actually need what you buy? (We doubt it.) What would you do with your time if you weren't working (or, were working less)? So goes Jem Cohen's 2004 CHAIN.

Through a stuttering landscape of diluted and bland, Cohen suggests we are trapped in a deadening cycle of consumerism via often stationary shots of chain storefronts, malls, and parking lots. When the camera actually moves, Cohen maintains the appearance of stagnation through the repetition of these bland chain-store landscapes. Again, again, again, again, again. This deadened rhythm frighteningly brings to light daily horrors overlooked:

The dually noteworthy chid-in-grocery-cart, above [pardon the photo of screen, frame as parallelogram and assuredly inaccurate color] , suggests child/person as commodity as well as passive student with a front-row-seat to learning consumption. Another brutally resonating throw-away is one of homeless "protagonist" Amanda's (Mira Billotte) monologues paired with images from a Home Depot-esque parking lot:

there are these little sheds, sometimes I wish I could just drag one into the woods and live in it

The statement just lays there. Both characters - here Amanda, also Tamiko (Miho Nikaida) - share flat, expressionless, emotionless speaking tones. Here though, Amanda notes these tiny homes as potential shelters for people in such an off-handed way that perfectly resonates the social status these sheds play - their existence isn't even allowed to conjure the question of whether or not they could house people. They just don't. Her line comes and goes. The thought not completed. Delivery emotionless.

It's actually kinda spooky [chuckle]. But after a while I got used to it. I like it.

While not filmically referencing the sheds, this seeming throw-away line, again, suggests the stupor we live in. If we pause to think about the choices we make, the lives we lead, we should find it 'kinda spooky', but we get used to it. Think we like it.

As noted, two characters - Amanda and Tamiko - populate Cohen's narrative, though the film is speckled with the incidental "extras" caught on tape, everyone floats ghost-like through the sterile-y dingy landscape. Though we learn in the end credits the chain locations are taken from all over the world, the film is set in America, the language is English. Tamiko is from Japan, doing research in America on amusement parks; Amanda is American. The labor of these women is service-oriented. Amanda is first shown as a motel maid, then also working as a general shop employee, last seen sweeping a sidewalk; Tamiko, though business class, works the service industry of amusement parks. Importantly, the point is made that the company Tamiko works for is looking to build a park in an abandoned steel factory. Cohen here seems to posit the vapid landscape we see here is the result of lost industry, the lost real work of tangible value. Further, and perhaps dangerously, there might also be the implication that the cultural outsider, the Japanese developer, is part of the problem. Cohen cleverly writes Tamkio's stilted-English dialogue to suggest economic warfare

Someday we will bring an amusement park to America, just as they came to Japan with Disneyland.

Not only does this suggest the decline of America to the ascendence of Japan, but it slyly makes the audience aware of the circulation of junk-culture. How do you like that, America? (Yeah, unfortunately, you probably do like it.)

While this might not be a thorough explanation of the characters' racial identities, it seems an important component. Likewise, the fact that both characters are female seems an obvious acknowledgement of the common perception that service industry labor is feminine. The film's world is almost entirely within this consumer death-trap. One noteworthy break from the emotionless tone of the film comes from Amanda's visit to a piano store, in her penultimate scene, she sits at a piano and eases into an expressive composition. Cohen's camera leaves Amanda in the store to play with the two employees, filming now from the parking lot, we see one of the employees go to speak to Amanda. Though we had heard her playing, we do not hear the dialogue. She quits playing. The suggestion seems to be that she has been kicked out. That she has finally "found voice" and been put back into her place. The next time we see her she tells us, in voice-over, that she now has two jobs and no time to live her life.

Likewise, Tamiko spirals into quietude as she stops hearing from her company back in Japan, also reading US accounts in the papers that the company is having difficulties. We see Tamiko becoming lifeless and depressed sitting in her hotel room, eventually needing to switch payment onto what we are led to believe is her personal credit card away from a company card. In her penultimate scene, while sitting in the hotel chair she has been lethargically fixed to, she begins lifting up her skirt with one hand. Cut to her head tilting back, eyes closed. Possibly, she is finding momentary pleasure from her glumming world. After a few moments of the camera lingering on her seemingly escaped self, she returns to the lanscape Cohen has created for us, cutting her onto the rooftop of a parking ramp, hotel in background.

Depeople-ing the film, Cohen leaves Tamiko behind with a dolly shot across the parking lot, cutting to another, equivalent parking lot rooftop with a hotel background. And then another. And probably another. Re-entering the documentary chain landscapes to close out the final several minutes of the film.

Just as Cohen suggests moments of hope in the penultimate scenes of his two characters, he could be said to do the same thing with out expectations closing out the film. After the just mentioned return to chain landscapes, Cohen returns us to the "world-changing" moment of an airplane flying into a building. Except here, we see the airplane moving across the frame toward a shopping mall. Clearly, it seems, we are to conjure 9/11, we are to wonder if the plane is going to hit the shopping mall, thus punctuating the film's anti-consumer message

But, of course, like the disappointments of our two characters, the plane flies behind the horizon of the shopping mall. The shopping mall still stands. Cut to black. Credits.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Interesting that Herzog proudly states the limitations he is working under - on this path, for limited time, etc. - wouldn't it be interesting if documentarians often spoke of their limitations - ethical, financial, etc. Here it seems rather meaningless.

Herzog states the paintings look as if they had been done yesterday though "they are not a forgery". Odd that he here defends their "truth"/facticity, when he seems otherwise unconcerned with the issue, as he later makes his typical 'names in a telephone book' analogy pointing to the belief that it is the stories behind the (alleged) facts that are of interest/importance.

A claim is made about a "powerful and deep" way of understanding the paintings - a different, more human?, way of understanding?

Herzog names the cave painters as "artists". Seemingly giving value to art-making as a human attribute, or a defining attribute? But also, interestingly, he asks if we "can ever understand the vision of the artists over such an expanse of time". I think he believes we can - go back to the "deep understanding" - but this does beg the question of whether or not we can ever understand the vision of the artist (over expanses of culture, place, etc.).

This popped for me during a conversation between the two female archeologists (I think they were archeologists), where one, who is otherwise hardly speaking, corrects the main speaker to state that they did not know the gender of these cave painters. The main speaker goes on with her masculine generics. After this point, it becomes painfully obvious that Herzog et alia are using masculine generics for all references to the painters, in fact, for all human existence. This becomes more painful and obvious when they begin their segment on the only human representation painted in the cave as a female one. So all the action/painting/being/"cultural creation" is male, even though only a female is present. There is also the odd moment in the film when two archeologist-types are talking about the flute discovery made by the woman, Maria, I believe, but Herzog allows the older male to do most of the speaking, and then introduces Maria, allowing her to give a basic recap of her discovery. Lastly, Herzog's imaginary of the "Eight year-old boy" with the wolf in "the forbidden part of the cave" - the story he wants to tell is clearly a very male one.

In the Postscript, Herzog tosses out some typically herzogian moments with the statement "nothing is real, nothing is certain" as he shows us the alligators. The albino alligator (of course attributed to the nearby nuclear power plant) "meets" another albino - "do they really meet or is this their imaginary reflection?" Moments later, Herzog closes the film on us with the same albino alligator staring at us in the audience, presumably we are being asked the same question - are we also this? Though an interesting question in itself, big-picture-wise, which I think Herzog loves to operate in, it is ridiculously out of place with the balance of the film. Herzog has spent the entire film caressing the cave walls, rhapsodizing about the artistic value of these paintings, the humanity on display. If Herzog wanted to reduce the importance of these cave paintings he merely would have suggested an equivalence (I guess there is an implied suggestion, but I mean that he would have made this explicit, which would have surprised no-one familiar with Herzog) to the alleged bear-claw markings on the same cave walls that laid underneath the paintings. What are the differences between such representations? he could have asked, just as he asks if we are that albino alligator. I think these seemingly more absurd questions are actually a bit more interesting, but here, their elision more telling.

The roundtable’s title comes from the Israeli release of the film’s title – The Silence of the Archive. An odd title, not touched on during the roundtable, that is worth further discussion at a later time. Here, I’ll briefly summarize what I thought were the most interesting points from each participant, without explicit commentary. It should go without saying that this three day event is a model for rich discussion that the documentary community desperately needs: a Thursday night screening (attended by over 200, I’d guess), followed by a Friday morning workshop (that I did not attend), and a Saturday evening roundtable driven by four academics, representing three disciplines, as well as the director present (attended by about 40). I think my notes well-represent speaker perspectives:

Julia Adney Thomas

The question of how images serve or resist (intended) representation.

The question of the artfulness/craft of the film’s construction – what does this mean given its content?

What does it mean that the images we have to work with are from the perpetrators?

Know it was propaganda, but how was it to be used.

Opines that the unfinished nature is due to Nazi shift from denigrating Jews to championing The Master Race, thus project simply abandoned

Tom Gunning

Eases into a soft critique that a value of problematic films opens spaces to discuss the problematic.

Felt that film put him “in contact with Evil”.

Felt “a deep sense of shame”, as sutured to gaze as perpetrator and spectator, as well as film critic/historian, that ‘his medium’ is capable of such evil, and/or, raises question “is film capable of evil?” Cites 1915 court case that first denies First Amendment protection to film arguing that film is more powerful than the press, that it is capable of evil.

Questions how it is problematic to remove a volatile representation such as this from its specificity – does it render the power of the original dramatically lessened? Cites Lanzmann on representing the Shoah.

Elaborates on narration at FILM’s opening that describes Nazi relationship to photography as a desire to use photography’s power to truth-claiming for telling lies.

Image is not only of what is shot but more importantly the perspectival/machine gaze, thus we “are made to inhabit a Nazi gaze” and is very uncomfortable with this move

Wonders what the Nazi’s did not show

Also highly uncomfortable with the fictionalized interviews with original filmer Wist, not only in themselves, but also importantly because the film is primarily a criticism of the original footage as false for uses of propaganda, here being replicated ‘for the other side’

Also worried about the glamorization of the testimony from survivors, its glossiness

Noa Steimatsky

Introduced herself as modernist film scholar that has willfully avoided (for the most past) screening Holocaust films “for whatever reason” that she still does not completely understand. Suggests the Holocaust is still too recent/present

Uncomfortable with Hersonski’s choice to slow and freeze moments of original footage – feels it “gives it a kind of beauty which I find horrifying…which also gives Wist a benefit”

Wonders how the chronology of the original footage matches the chronology in current film

Questions the “cold geometry of the framing…the extreme close-ups of emotionless Wist" character. This coldness acts to tame “the hot wild material of the archive”

Also, like Gunning, uncomfortable with the framing and “high-stylized” representations of the witnesses, they are “casual and expressive”, they have a “retarding effect” on the archival material

Most powerful moment when the photo from the trash is picked up. Hersonski slows and pauses on the photo, but is more interested in the fact that the Nazi filmer actually captured this – what was the motivation in capturing this?

Yeal Hersonski

In response to Gunning’s questioning the appropriateness of the decision to fabricate the interview material, she emphatically says “Hell, yes”.

Stated she “never intended to confuse the viewer [that interviews were not real]…didn’t mean to indicate this is how it was…[if this is the case] I should go back to my drawing boards”. Though stated she was “aware of our own dangerous power as a manipulative filmmaker”

Made point that we are “living during a time when there are so many other documentaries of atrocities”